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F-ree for loyal readers like you is this new Special Report: Membership Site Service Review spreadsheet.
It's a vendor comparison that lists 30+ different companies and web sites. It can help you find the best software vendor to power your own online community or social network.
Membership sites can be a great way to build an online business with recurring monthly cash flow. If you can identify a target market with common interests that are well-served by online communication, you can set up a gated subscription membership web site community.
This approach to e-commerce can be a very profitable one. To help you learn more about it, I've interviewed successful entrepreneurs making great money from online subscription membership sites on my Podcast Radio Show, online communities are discussed extensively in my first book, Internet Riches, and I've personally helped build multi-million dollar membership sites like BillOReilly.com, too.
Because of my expertise in online communities, I get lots of questions about HOW to build an online community membership site or personalized social network cost-effectively.
So, I've developed this vendor comparison spreadsheet for you. This spreadsheet focuses on cost-effective software solutions for small businesses and entrepreneurs, not necessarily corporate level, enterprise (expensive) solutions. I haven't yet found the perfect provider, but this research can help you find more effective solutions to grow your own membership site, too.
I'm still looking for a low cost, WYSIWYG editing, hosted (SAAS/ASP) online community membership site solution that includes integrated recurring membership billing. Any suggestions?
Comments, updates, and suggestions for this spreadsheet are very welcome. Just leave a Comment please!
(If there's interest, my team can expand this matrix, too. Let me know your questions.)
[And be sure to sign up for my fr-e-e email newsletters to receive more fr-ee research reports and online marketing advice, too.]
** UPDATE - March 2009:
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Thanks to a tip from one of my readers, I also now have investigated Subhub.This service actually meets ALL of my criteria for creating a turnkey membership site. It includes integrated recurring billing (using Paypal), WYSIWYG online editing and hosting, multiple membership levels, message boards, and more. SubHub offers a very impressive suite of services for only $97/month. |
I like this service so much that I have personally used it to power the Instant Internet Business Secrets membership web site and become an affiliate, too.
Check out SubHub's subscription membership site service here.
Here's a fun site that should entertain you for a minute this weekend: Check out the challenge at AmazingMindReading.com.
This clever site donates proceeds to animal rescue, too. Both fun and charitable!
Thanks to Paul Myers' newsletter for this.
(And let me know in the Comments if you figured it out...)
ContactAnyCelebrity.com's founder, Jordan Mcauley joins me on my E-Commerce Success Radio Show & Podcast this Friday.
Visit ScottFoxRadio.com on Friday at 2pm ET / 11am PT to listen to our chat live.
Jordan and I will discuss his amazingly successful online business, including tips on:
Join us live at ScottFoxRadio.com, call in with questions to 1-646-716-4641, or email questions for Jordan to radio @ scottfox.com.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been a lucrative business for many consultants in the past decade but the game is almost finished.
Why?
There is so much competition online today that attracting high search engine rankings for major keywords has become difficult. SEO is becoming a "big boys" game and many smaller SEO clients can only afford to target increasingly narrow keyword niches.
The “new establishment” will freeze you out.
Companies that today have sites or pages with top organic rankings for popular keywords are making good money from their positions. Understandably, they will reinvest to maintain those positions to keep attracting traffic. This will keep new players from obtaining top ranked placements for major keywords. For example, if Toyota figures out how to become #1 for the keyword “minivan”, why would they ever surrender that ranking? They have the resources to deploy to keep it.
Search Engine Algorithms are Getting Too Smart for Your SEO Consultant Games
In years past almost any page with well-placed keywords, meta tags, and links from highly ranked sites could rank highly in search engine results for its chosen keywords. Today, as niches fill up and search engines get "smarter", it's increasingly required to actually publish worthwhile content to attract top rankings and traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and other top search engines.
Organic rankings are already increasingly calculated including "off page" factors that measure not just link backs but quality of content, clicks, and conversions. This means it's becoming increasingly difficult even for professionals to game the system for higher rankings. All the emphasis on creative brain-storming of new keywords is proof that competition is intense and increasingly difficult to beat.
TV had it Right!
In fact, those who own organically top ranked websites may become the new TV networks – renting their valuable Web real estate to advertisers the same way TV sold audience attention blocks in the 20th century. You can see this already with top bloggers essentially renting the ad inventory created by their content to top–paying affiliate programs.
If I'm correct, these trends will combine to:
a) allow the top-ranked sites to perpetuate their hold on top keywords
b) causing search engines like Google to continue improving their ranking algorithms to find and rank the best "real content" instead of the best-optimized sites
c) thereby leveling the technical playing field and reducing the effectiveness of SEO techniques
b) which will put most SEO consultants out of business
What do you think?
Are these trends hurting your SEO yet? Is SEO going to fade away as a relic of the "first generation" of Internet business?
What are you going to do for a living once the SEO party ends?
[Subscribe by RSS or subscribe by email for my follow-up post on this topic, "The Empire Strikes Back - The Return of PR Kills SEO?" coming soon!]
We had a great time in Santa Barbara last night.
I was the guest speaker for Catalyst, a local educational and networking organization founded by Chrissy Deferville. The event was sold out so I'm pleased to say that the ticket sales made a nice contribution to Junior Achievement, my chosen charity.
My topic was "Your CEO Potential". It was a good fit for the audience of Catalyst members and guests because the organization is dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and philanthropy for entrepreneurs and professionals.
My presentation included a number of inspiring quotations taken from the 365MotivationalQuotes.com collection. Many people in the audience asked for copies, so I'm offering it here to them and to you, too.
Click to download this fr-ee 2 page PDF of great quotations, including gems by Jim Rohn, Robert Kiyosaki, Seth Godin, Confucius, Tony Robbins, and even Harry Potter's Dumbledore.
Thanks for making my blog part of your life.
Are we friends yet?
Of course I know you're reading this but are we "friends" yet on Facebook? How about on Twitter?
Here's my fan page on Facebook. Please click to join.
Here's my friend page, too.
And here's where you can follow me on Twitter.
Even if you're not a super-active user on these services, having more friends can help you learn how to use them better (and for f-ree).
Let's hook up!
Try Scott Fox's new 
The Empire Strikes Back - The Return of PR kills SEO?
I believe Search Engine Optimization is doomed. I wrote about this recently in a post titled "The Death of SEO - Is the Game Over?".
I concluded in that post that increasing competition for top keywords and on-going improvements to search engine ranking algorithms are combining to doom both SEO techniques and consultants. I expect that SEO will be looked back upon as a rudimentary marketing technology - the crude "bows and arrows" of early online marketers.
Am I right? (Please post your comments on that post here.)
PR has traditionally been the specialty of creating media coverage of client “news”. The PR industry has been slowly learning to promote word-of-mouth conversations about client products and news throughout online forums, interactive communities, and the blogosphere. Lucky for publicists worldwide, just as the PR industry's expertise is finally corralling the wild promotional free-for-all online, SEO looks to have peaked in its influence.
Result?
As SEO fades in importance, PR will have the chance to reclaim its crown. The public relations industry will have survived the fragmentation of the online mediaverse and outlasted the dominance of SEO trickery.
Its traditional expertise in initiating and manipulating public discourse will once again have increasing effect online – reversing the trend of recent years.
Leveraging the many new online marketing tools discussed in this blog and in my books (like blogs, email, Twitter, article syndication, RSS, etc.) will be the best best way to attract publicity attention online. And savvy PR firms may soon be on top again - "facilitating access" to tomorrow's key influencers.
[Please subscribe to this blog by RSS or subscribe by email if you'd like read my upcoming posts on "Next Generation Marketing Strategies".]
What do you think?
Is PR going to return to a larger role online and especially in the blogosphere? Why or why not?
Your opinions are welcome - please comment below.
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